


the truth was built to bend

by itsactuallycorrine



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: (but it's not a bellarke fake relationship), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Co-workers, Deception, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Friends to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-07-01
Packaged: 2018-04-01 03:35:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4004335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsactuallycorrine/pseuds/itsactuallycorrine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern coworkers!au where Clarke lied and told Bellamy she was married when they first met</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i should not be doing this when i have 3 - count them, three - WIPs.
> 
> title from arctic monkeys

Clarke considers herself an honest person - too honest maybe. Blunt even. Brutal occasionally.

She’s forthright and headstrong and fears little. She gets what she wants and cuts her losses when she doesn’t.

She tries to live a life without regret, having seen too much loss.

But this - the situation she’s in now - she regrets this.

She gapes at Bellamy as he looms over her desk, having dropped his bomb. “Uhhhhh.”

“Is this weird?” he asks in a rare flash of insecurity and Clarke struggles not to find it charming. She struggles not to find a lot about Bellamy charming these days.

“No, no,” she says, clearing her throat and squaring up her shoulders. “Um, single friends. Hmmm. Do you mind if I think about this for a minute and get back to you?”

His brow knits as he all but cocks his head like a puppy in confusion. “Sure. That’s not a problem. Ask your husband, too, you know, if he knows someone.” 

Her husband. Right. The one who didn’t exist, except in these encounters with her coworker. Clarke licks her lips and glances away. “Yep. You bet.” Her desk phone rings and she lunges for it, casting what she hopes comes off as an apologetic glance to Bellamy, but he’s already waving her off on his way back to his cube. “Document control, this is Clarke,” she answers mechanically while her mind spins.

When Bellamy had started at this company six months ago, she hadn’t been in any frame of mind to deal with a potential office romance. She’d just been dumped out of the blue by her girlfriend of three years, she’d lost out on a lucrative promotion, and her mother had begun dating again, far too soon after her husband’s death, in Clarke’s biased opinion. 

So when the new guy - the new, hot, smart, smirking guy - had asked her to lunch during his first week, she’d said the first thing that’d come to mind: “I’m married.”

After countless hours spent soul-searching and sleepless hours, she still doesn’t know why  _that_  particular lie had come out.

Bellamy hadn’t been pushy, giving up as soon as she’d told him, and she knows that had she told the truth - “ _I’m not in a place right now where I can be with anyone_ ” - he would’ve done the same thing. Even then, she knew it, could sense he was one of the good ones.

But no, she’d had to go with, “ _I’m married_ ,” and now she was stuck in this never-ending lie. How did you come clean about something like that?

The longer it went on, the worse the inevitable fallout would be, she knew. 

But... she couldn’t bring herself to tell him. 

Because the strangest thing had happened after the romantic potential was dead in the water: they became friends.  _Great_  friends, even. The kind of friends who could communicate just with looks (leading to way too many department meetings where one or both of them laughed inappropriately). The kind of friends who had inside jokes about their coworkers and cheered each other up and were up-front when they thought the other was out of line.

And then something even stranger had happened: Clarke had fallen in love with him.

And he thought she was married.

And wanted her to set him up with one of her or her fictional husband’s single friends.

She drops her head to her desk, even while she answers the questions the quality auditor is rattling off over the phone.

* * *

 

“Just tell him, dude,” her other best friend, Raven, says when Clarke brings it up over dinner that night. She’s the only other person besides Clarke who knows about the lie; Clarke has been surprised how easy it’s been to sustain thus far, but neither she nor Bellamy interact with their other coworkers. And they haven’t reached the point where they saw each other socially, outside of work.”What’s the worst that can happen?”

Clarke mentally pulls up her checklist of cataclysmic events. “He gets mad, quits the company, moves away, we never speak again, he falls in love and gets married and has kids, and I die alone.”

Raven freezes with her fork halfway to her mouth before she snorts and takes the bite of lasagna. “Okay,” she says around the mouthful, “I can understand him getting mad - who wouldn’t? - but do you really think he’d quit his job? You might be giving yourself a little too much credit.”

“Maybe he won’t quit,” Clarke allows, “but he might transfer - a different department or a different branch. It’s not like document control is his true calling. He would succeed no matter where he goes.” She smiles a little before she glances up from where she’s creating patterns in the sauce with her fork tines to find Raven eyeing in disgust. “What?”

“Your blindingly obvious love is grossing me out. I’m trying to eat here.”

Clarke rolls her eyes. “Okay,” she says in her most patronizing tone, “how about I eat and you tell me again about how Wick is ‘just the worst’ and you want nothing more than to ‘slap his stupid, pretty boy face’?”

“Funny,” Raven says, flipping the bird over the table. “So who’re you gonna set him up with?”

Shrugging in misery, Clarke takes a bite to stall for time, even though she knows the prolonged silence won’t bother Raven once she’s got her teeth into an issue. “It’ll have to be someone who doesn’t know me very well. Just in case, you know...”

“How about Roma?”

“Roma?” Clarke thinks about the willowy brunette. Thinks about her eating dinner with Bellamy, maybe dancing, sharing a kiss, going up to his- “No,” she says, throat tight. “No. Not Roma. She’s too... tall.”

“Too tall. Okay. How about Fox? She’s not much taller than you.”

“Fox?” Clarke asks in shock. “ _Fox?_  Raven, she’s just a kid! Bellamy’s six years older than  _me_. No.”

Raven makes a noise like a kettle. “Fox is 21. It’s not like she’s underage. But I can see where this is going, and that’s absolutely nowhere.” Clarke opens her mouth and Raven stops her with a gesture. “Clarke, look, either tell him and live with the consequences or don’t tell him and set him up with some random girl -  _I’ll_  pick; you lost your veto power. What’s it going to be?”

Clarke sets her fork down and closes her eyes. She thinks again about Bellamy out with some other woman and it makes her sick to her stomach.

But then she thinks about losing him from her life for good, of a Bellamy-less existence, and her heart threatens to crack in two.

Turns out, there’s not really a choice involved at all.

* * *

 

When Clarke passes the contact info to Bellamy, she braces herself for hearing every gory detail about the date. And she does know plans were made - Raven confirmed that from the coworker she’d chosen for Bellamy - but Bellamy has been alarmingly mum about the whole thing.

A few weeks after she’d passed him the phone number, Clarke can’t take it anymore. She and Bellamy are sitting at lunch in the employee cafeteria and he’s telling her some story about his sister, who he doted on, when she blurts out, “How are things going with Echo?”

He stops mid-sentence, raising a brow at her interruption, but goes along with the change in topic with only a shake of his head. “Good. They’re good.”

“So you’re still seeing her?” she asks casually, focusing all her attention on fishing the absolute perfect chip from her bag.

Bellamy shrugs and takes a bite of his sandwich. “Whenever we can line up our schedules. We’ve been to dinner a few times.” 

“Great,” she says with false enthusiasm, biting back questions like  _Where do you see it going?_  and  _Are you sleeping together?_  and  _Do you love her more than me?_  She blinks at the last thought. There is less than no evidence that Bellamy thinks about her romantically, let alone loves her. Sure, he had asked her out right after they met. And yes, he always stops by to fill up her coffee cup whenever he’s getting some for himself. And one time, it’s true, he emailed her at home half a dozen times when she called off to make sure she wasn’t dead in a ditch somewhere. And every once in a while, she catches him gazing at her with soft brown eyes. 

But... they’re friends. That’s all perfectly normal, friendly behavior, right?

She tunes back in just as Bellamy looks at her expectantly. “I’m sorry. What?”

He frowns. “You feeling all right? You’re kind of out of it today.”

“Just tired. What’d you say?”

“I said that we should all double sometime. Are you guys free this Saturday?”

“Saturday?” Clarke’s mind goes blank. She can’t think of even one viable excuse not to go on this double date. Other than, of course, the fact that she doesn’t have a husband. “We’re... free.”

“Great!” Bellamy says, standing and tossing his garbage into the bin from a few tables over. He raises his hands in the air in victory when it sinks in without hitting the rim before he turns to her.

Clarke scrambles to hide her grimace. “Great,” she agrees faintly, wondering what the hell she’s going to do now.

* * *

 

After Raven had laughed herself sick, the two of them sat down and went through all the options for the double date.

Clarke was loathe to bring another one of their friends in on this, but Raven made a compelling argument. “It has to be someone who knows you well enough that Bellamy would buy you’re married.”

And that’s why Clarke is sitting in a restaurant with her very married friend posing as her husband. “This might be the stupidest thing you’ve ever done on my behalf,” she says while they wait for Bellamy and Echo, her nervous fingers toying with the cloth napkin in her lap.

Monty shakes his head. “Junior year, Jasper and I peed in Finn’s gas tank while we were high.”

Clarke gapes at him for a long beat before a laugh bubbles out of her. “Oh, my god, you didn’t! How did I not know this?”

He shrugs with a small smile. “You had enough going on at the time. It was the least we could do.”

“My hero,” she says with a grin, leaning in to kiss him on the cheek.

Which is, of course, when Bellamy and Echo finally arrive. Bellamy clears his throat and Clarke jumps a little, then stands a split-second after Monty does so introductions can be made. “Bellamy! This is my husband Monty. Monty, this is Bellamy and Echo.”

After hands have been shaken, they all take their seats and let the awkward silence settle over them, before Echo takes that as her cue and starts asking Clarke and Monty about how they met, how long they’d been married, and so on.

Clarke lets Monty handle the questions, jumping in when necessary, and surveys Bellamy’s date. She’s certainly beautiful and she and Bellamy make a striking couple. Echo’s dark hair is touched with tasteful highlights and her skin is smooth and perfectly bronzed. She’s model-gorgeous and Clarke has never felt more miserable in her entire life. 

She glances Bellamy’s way and he moves his gaze off Monty for a second, dark eyes locking on her and Clarke sucks in a breath at seeing her own misery reflected in his expression. It clears after a second, his face morphing into an annoying blank slate, and one corner of his mouth tips up.

Clarke’s pulse races and she turns away, concentrating on taking a sip of water without spilling. It’s more difficult than it should be, considering how her hand is trembling. 

Beside her, Monty reaches over and folds his hand over her free one on the table, calming her, and she exhales slowly and leans her shoulder into his. There’s no way she would’ve survived this far without him. She shoots him an affectionate smile and he winks at her.

“You two are adorable,” Echo announces, glancing at their hands with a reserved smile. “Do you mind if I ask, Clarke, why you don’t wear a wedding band but Monty does?”

Clarke freezes until Monty gives her hand a gentle squeeze before he releases her. “Oh, I’m just a... a, uh, non-traditionalist. I didn’t change my name either.”

Bellamy shifts, leaning forward and finally joining the conversation. “And you’re okay with that?” he asks Monty, who shrugs.

“The important part is that we’re married,” he says. “I don’t need to brand Clarke with the trappings of ownership as long as I know we’re committed.”

Bellamy snorts at that, leaning back again and folding his arms across his chest. 

Clarke raises a brow at him. “Problem with that?”

“No,” he says at length, meeting her gaze, “it’s just that if yo- if I were married, I’d want the traditional stuff - matching rings, matching names, the works.”

Something in the back of her head whispers,  _Clarke Blake_ , and she wrinkles her nose. That’s a terrible name. “Of course you would. Because you’re possessive.”

He groans and slumps back in his chair, his arms falling to his sides. “Here we go again.”

“You are,” she insists. “Why else would you think you had the right to dictate who your sister can and can’t date? She’s a grown woman with a mind of her own and-”

“And there’s a difference between possessive and protective,” he argues, like he always does when they discuss this, drilling his finger into the table top for emphasis. “And Lincoln is seven years older than her, and I don’t-”

“You don’t want to deal with the fact that your sister is an adult and doesn’t need your protecting anymore. Seven years is hardly cause for-” Monty grabs for her hand again, but she shakes him off, until he calls her name. “What?” she asks impatiently.

“Are you ready to order?” he asks without inflection, nodding towards the waitress standing there, but she can see his dark eyes shining in amusement.

“Oh.” Clarke blinks as she realizes that she and Bellamy had done that thing again, the one where they forget they’re not the only people around, and she smiles at the server in apology. “Yes, of course.” She starts as the waitress goes around the table, ending up with Bellamy who orders the grilled swordfish, making Clarke frown.

As soon as the waitress walks away, she turns on him. “You hate fish.”

“Actually,” Echo says, linking her arm with Bellamy’s, “I talked him into trying my swordfish the first time we went out and he loved it. Didn’t you, Bell?”

“Yeah, it was pretty good.” He smiles a little. “Turns out when fish is prepared by someone who knows what they’re doing, I like it. Who knew?”

Clarke gapes at him, piqued. “I knew! I told you that the very first time you explained why you don’t like fish.”

“Fine, princess,” he says with a placating grin. “You were right; I was wrong. Are you happy now?”

“Perfectly happy,  _Bell_ ,” she bites back, petulantly gratified when he scowls at her in confusion. Monty pokes her side.

Their appetizers are delivered and Monty jumps in to break the tension while Clarke realizes for the first time that she might just lose Bellamy even if he never learns the truth.

Watching him with Echo as they share an appetizer plate, her arm still linked with his, Clarke suspects she’s already started losing him, bit by bit.

* * *

 

The remainder of the dinner passes without a hitch and soon Bellamy is tucking Echo into a cab with only a chaste kiss, since she has to be up early the next morning for her sister’s baby shower. 

Clarke stands on the sidewalk, tucked under Monty’s arm, and pretends not to watch the other couple.

“You could’ve told me you were in love with him,” Monty murmurs.

She closes her eyes and turns her head to rest against his shoulder. “It’ll pass.”

“Oh, Clarke,” he says, dropping a kiss on her forehead. “Why would you want it to?” When she looks up at him in frustrated agony, he searches her gaze before smiling. “You really don’t know that he loves you, too?”

Before Clarke can process that bombshell, Bellamy strolls over. “You guys are heading west, right? Need a lift?”

She catches herself just before she says that Monty lives to the south and bites her lip.

“Actually,” Monty says then, pulling back from Clarke, “Since Clarke picked me up, I need to go pick up my car from the parking garage at my office before the guard leaves. And if I’m there anyway, I should check on a few email replies that didn’t come through before I left. Would you mind taking Clarke home, Bellamy? I’d owe you one.”

“Oh.” Bellamy swallows hard, glances at Clarke, then back to Monty. “No, I don’t mind. It’s not a problem.”

“Great!” Monty slaps Bellamy on the shoulder. “It was so great to finally meet you.” He steps up to Clarke and wraps her in a hug, pressing a kiss against the side of her head. “You can do this,” he whispers before pulling back. “I’ll see you soon, sweetheart,” he says with a wink before flagging down the next passing cab.

Clarke and Bellamy both watch the cab until it can no longer be seen, then turn as one towards the restaurant’s lot. “So,” she says, “that was fun?” She winces at the way her voice trails upward at the end, turning it into a question instead of a statement.

But if Bellamy notices, he doesn’t say anything. “Yeah,” he says, and his voice sounds tired, maybe a little defeated. He glances at her. “Monty seems like a great guy.”

“He’s one of the best,” she says honestly as they climb into Bellamy’s old Ford beater.

The drive is silent, except for the light traffic around them and Clarke’s occasional direction, and before she knows it, he’s pulling up into her driveway. 

Clarke doesn’t climb out immediately and Bellamy must realize she has something on her mind, because he cuts the headlights. 

Her heart is pounding, but she knows it’s now or never. Things cannot go on the way they’ve been, not when it’s in her power to change them. “Bellamy,” she says, voice rasping, “I need to tell you something.”

She feels him shift next to her, but she can’t look at him, not if she wants to get through this. “Anything,” he says.

“That day... that day that you asked me out after you started at the company. Do you remember that?”

He huffs out a laugh. “Yeah, Clarke. I’m not likely to forget it.”

“Right. Right. Anyway, I had had a bad stretch of luck right before that and when you asked me to lunch, I... I didn’t know what to say. I panicked, which is not like me at all, and I did something so unbelievably stupid that I can’t believe I’ve gotten away with it this long.”

He’s on high alert now. She feels him all but vibrating across the console. “Okay,” he says slowly.

“And the thing is, Bellamy, you’re one of my best friends and this thing that I did, I knew that if you found out about it, you’d probably hate me, so I just kept playing along with it. Because I couldn’t - I can’t - stand the thought of you hating me.” He takes a breath, probably to reassure her, but she holds him off with her hand. “Wait. Just... I’ve gotten this far, just let me finish it.” Closing her eyes, she takes a deep breath and pulls the band-aid off. “Monty and I aren’t married. Well, Monty is,” she babbles, “just not to me, to a wonderful guy named Miller. But I’m not married and I don’t even know  _why_  that came out of my mouth  _at all_ , but how do you take something like that back? And I wasn’t try-”

Her rambling is cut short by the hot press of Bellamy’s mouth against hers. She blinks her eyes open just to be sure and, yep, Bellamy’s stretched across the console, hand on her face, kissing her tenderly. She lets her eyes drift shut again and moves her mouth beneath his.

He pulls back too soon, resting his forehead against hers. “Thank god,” he whispers. “Thank god. I’m in love with you, I’ve been in love with you for so long, I didn’t know what to do anymore.”

“Really?” she asks, pulling back to stare at him. His eyelids flutter up and her breath catches at the longing in his dark brown eyes. “Bellamy, I’m in love with you, too.”

He swears beneath his breath, ducking his head to seal his mouth over hers again and Clarke opens to him and the heat in the car ratchets up to eleven.

When they pull apart again, she laughs breathlessly. “I can’t believe this. I really thought you’d hate me.”

“Never,” he says, punctuating that with a fierce, brief kiss. “I could never hate you. I’m mad as hell at you, though.” He kisses her again. “I’m really, really-” And again. “Mad.” And again.

“I’ll make it up to you,” she promises with a slow smile, easing the door open and nodding her head towards the house.

He’s hot on her heels all the way in, turning her as soon as they’re through the door so her back is pressed against the wall and his mouth has free access to the side of her neck. 

Until, of course, she pulls him down the hall to her bedroom, and makes it up to him for hours.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy POV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With very few exceptions, my writing process consists mostly of procrastinating writing all day and then waiting until the very end of the day, writing something quick, posting it, and then going to sleep. The morning after I posted this story, I woke up and re-read it and realized something - I had never given Echo/Bellamy closure!
> 
> When no one called me out on it in the comments, I thought I had gotten away with an egregious plot hole... until [amanda_hemi](http://archiveofourown.org/users/amanda_hemi/pseuds/amanda_hemi) caught it, too. 
> 
> I was considering writing this anyway, but that was the push I needed, so thanks!

The thing is, Bellamy doesn't  _want_ to be in love with his coworker/friend. He doesn't want to be in love, period, because along with "love" comes a lot of other scary concepts, like "commitment" and "maturity". 

He spent years playing the straight-and-narrow, raising Octavia, and his only solace throughout the toughest periods of that process had been the thought that one day, he'd be free. Free to be selfish and not have to consider someone else's needs before his own. Free to bring women home - a new one every night, if he wanted - and watch the shows he wanted and walk around the house naked if he felt like it.

So of course, he takes some shitty office job the summer after Octavia graduates from college, to help ends meet while they're both paying off student loans, and meets Clarke and... 

Well, that's all it takes, really. He's a goner. Completely smitten from the first time he cracks her too-serious exterior and gets her to huff out a laugh at some joke about the pitiful work instruction he's been given.

She rolls over to her desk to help him make sense of his new job and he can't help himself: within the first week, he asks her out.

And, yeah, it sucks when she tells him she's married, but it's okay. It's better that way, because he has  _plans_ and they did not factor in a stupid crush on his coworker.

It's great.

Really.

 

* * *

 

He doesn't notice anything off at first, not until a couple months into his new job. Even then, it's not a glaring red flag, but a curiosity. He's leaning over the half-wall of Clarke's cubicle, teasing her about something or another, when he notices the pictures on her desk. There's one of Clarke in a cap and gown beside a couple he assumes are her parents - she has her father's coloring, but her mother's intensity. There's another of Clarke with her arms draped around a beautiful girl with a sleek dark ponytail and tawny skin and a wide grin. And there's one of two little kids pulling faces at the camera: a girl sticking her tongue out, clearly Clarke at around 9 or 10 years old, and a boy the same age with dark skin, crossing his eyes.

Bellamy laughs a little and Clarke follows his gaze with a soft smile. "That's Wells. He was my best friend when I was growing up," she says, and he hears the sadness in her voice loud and clear and tries to redirect her attention.

"Who's that?" he asks, pointing to the picture of her and the other girl. 

"My best friend Raven." She grins with fondness and touches the frame. "She's wild. And crazy-smart."

He hums, nodding. "She's pretty hot," he says with a smirk, quirking an eyebrow when Clarke makes a face at him.

"She'd eat you alive." 

He sighs and walks backwards towards his own cubicle. "But what a way to go." Laughing when she hits him with a ball of paper, he drops into his chair and straightens the only picture on his desk, one of Octavia in her own cap and gown at her college graduation.

It's only then that it hits him: Clarke doesn't have a picture of her spouse in her cube. In fact, in nearly eights weeks, she's never even mentioned them by name, so he's not even sure if it's a woman or a man.

He mulls it over for a second until his phone rings, distracting him.

 

* * *

 

Over time, it becomes more and more noticeable - Clarke tells him about her weekends but never mentions anyone by name besides her friend Raven. She never refers to her spouse, even just by saying "my wife" or "my husband". 

At first, he assumes she thinks he's hung up on her, which... yes. Obviously. But he's doing his best to be a good friend and doesn't need his feelings protected. He's a big boy and he tells her as much during one of their breaks. 

She stares at him blankly before her face goes pink. "Oh, uh. I was that obvious, huh?" Her smile looks wry enough but isn't quite right.

Bellamy narrows his eyes. "Well, it wasn't subtle," he says at length. "You've never mentioned her or him, to the point that I've known you almost ten weeks and don't even know which pronoun is correct."

Something like pain flickers across her face for a split second before it's replaced with an almost malicious gleam in her eyes. "Him," she answers decisively and he's taken aback. She relaxes. "Sorry, I, uh, I had this girlfriend who  _hated_ that I was bisexual and had ever been with a man. She dumped me right before I... met my husband."

At the time, it makes sense, and he just files it away as one more piece of information about Clarke. 

 

* * *

 

But... she still doesn't call her husband by name, he notices. 

Weeks and months go by and Bellamy is truly suspicious now, to the point that feels he needs some unbiased outside perspective.

Octavia laughs at him when he explains it all to her. "Oh, come on, Bell," she says, mussing his hair and making him scowl. "I think you're feeling gross about having a crush on a married woman and trying to justify it."

"Don't you think I've considered that?" he snaps, standing up from the couch they're sitting on to pace around his living room. "Of course I have. But... it's not that. It's really not. Something's going on."

She scowls at him. "Well, even if it is, even if she is lying, is that really the kind of woman you want to be in a relationship with?"

"If she's lying, she has a good reason," he says, grimacing when she laughs again. "You don't know her. She's a good person."

"She's a good person who is potentially lying about being married." His sister gets up and grabs his arm to stop his pacing. "Okay, look, if she  _is_ lying, then you're going to have to press for more details. If she hedges or changes the subject, then that'll at least give you some clues. But you'll never be certain unless you confront her."

Bellamy scoffs. "Sure, I'll just accuse her of lying and watch our entire friendship blow up in my face. No big deal." He shakes his head in quick impatient movements. "No, she needs to tell me. I need her to want to tell me."

Octavia watches him closely for a long minute before her face softens. "You really have it bad, don't you, big brother?" she says in commiseration before she hugs him.

Returning the hug, he presses his cheek to her hair and sighs. 

Being in love is the worst.

 

* * *

 

With Octavia's help, Bellamy comes up with a plan of sorts. No, he's not going to confront Clarke directly about it, but he wouldn't be himself if he wasn't being proactive. 

Step one is to try to get an ally closer to the situation, someone to hopefully pump for information, which he does by asking Clarke to set him up on a date with one of her friends. 

When she hesitates at first, something warm and pleasant fills his chest. Something that feels maybe like... hope? Could it be that Clarke is jealous?

That warm feeling cools fast when she drops a number on his desk the next morning. "Her name is Echo," she says before she retreats into her cubicle to boot up her computer.

He toys with the piece of paper in discontent, reminding himself that this is what he  _wanted_ and any fantasies of Clarke being so overcome with envy that she reveals all were stupid and pointless. It was never going to be that easy.

That night, he calls the number and sets the date, not bothering to make conversation with the clearly dismissive woman on the other end of the line.

She's far more interested when they meet in person for dinner that Friday. "You're Bellamy?" she asks, tone colored with enough surprise that Bellamy is flattered.

He smiles and extends his hand. "And you're Echo. It's great to meet you," he says, and he's not lying. Echo is a beautiful woman, with honey-brown eyes and a full mouth, and had he not already been in love with someone else, he would've been overjoyed to be set up with her.

But he  _is_ already in love with someone, and so he wastes no time trying to get the intel he needed. "How well do you know Clarke?" he asks as soon as the waitress takes their drink order.

"Oh, not at all." She shrugs when he stares at her in consternation. "I work with Raven and she told me that Clarke was looking to set-up one of her friends and asked if I was interested."

Great, all of this and he didn't even accomplish step one. He sighs internally and scrounges up some charm. "And I don't know Raven at all, besides a few things from Clarke. What is it that the two of you do?" he asks, settling into familiar rhythms. 

At the end of the night, though, as he walks her to her car, he tells her, "Echo, I had a good time tonight, but I don't think this is going to work out."

"You're hung up on her, right?" She rolls her eyes when he gapes. "Clarke? It's pretty obviously from the way you talk about her."

He gives up with a helpless shrug. "I am. But it's not... It's a pipe dream," he admits aloud for the first time, stomach sinking at the realization. "Nothing can come of it."

She hums and watches him before smiling wryly. "It's a shame. I can't remember the last time a set-up worked out in my favor this well. I'm not interested in investing time into a relationship that's clearly going nowhere, but... I wouldn't be opposed to friendship."

He smiles. "I'd like that."

 

* * *

 

 

The two of them grab dinner a few times and somehow Bellamy's entire theory about Clarke comes to light.

"You know this sounds insane?" Echo asks him as they have drinks at a sports bar near her work one night. "I mean, you're aware that I am in fear for my life because of how batshit crazy you sound, right?" And she grins, obviously terrified.

Bellamy snorts. "Believe me, that's nothing that I haven't told myself. Or that my sister hasn't told me. But... there's something going on." He sets his jaw as he peels the corner of the label on his beer bottle.

"So being set-up with me, that was step one in your plan? What was step two?" 

"Well, because you didn't know her, there isn't one." She snickers at him and Bellamy takes a long pull of his drink. "Yeah, yeah. I'm... re-evaluating. Maybe I just need to be patient and she'll just tell me the truth one day."

"If she's even lying to begin with," Echo says, but takes mercy on him when he slumps over the bar in misery. "Okay, look, try to plan a double date with us, her, and her husband. Even if she goes through with it, she might recruit someone like a stupid rom-com. Once you see them together, you should know for sure. And if she feels anything romantic about you at all, she won't like seeing us together."

He groans. "I hate all these stupid games."

She pats his shoulder in consolation, which is at odds with her tone. "You don't want to confront her directly and you don't like playing games. Which one is the lesser of two evils?"

 

* * *

 

When Clarke brings Echo up, he chooses to play the game, for one last night, and tries not to be disheartened when Clarke takes the bait.

He emails Echo as soon as he gets back to his desk, " _Hope you're free Saturday. We have a double date with C and her husband-who-may-or-may-not-exist."_

The message barely gets sent before a reply pops up. " _Wouldn't miss this freak show for the world._ "

It makes him smile a little, even while he stares at his calendar in dread.

One way or another, he's going to know for sure.

It's not nearly as comforting as it should be.

 

* * *

 

 

The first thing he sees when he walks into the restaurant on Saturday is Clarke kissing some guy on the cheek. His throat tightens and he clears it, both to loosen it and to get the couple's attention.

Clarke looks at him in surprise, face going pink, as she and her husband rise to her feet and introductions are made.

Bellamy surveys Monty, Clarke's husband. He seems like a nice enough guy, if quiet, and he wonders how Monty's gentle personality doesn't get steam-rolled by Clarke's intensity, but keeps the thought to himself. The affection between the two of them is genuine, though, and Bellamy feels a pit growing in his stomach.

He turns his regard from Monty to Clarke, only to find her staring at him with a stormy expression that she blinks away immediately. He wonders if she's half as thrown by seeing him with Echo as he is seeing her with Monty and the possibility makes him smile a little.

It falls off his face when Monty wraps his hand around Clarke's on the table and she sends him a fond smile, leaning into him. That kind of relaxed affection isn't something that can be faked and Bellamy feels that he knows Clarke well enough that he'd be able to tell.

As Echo talks to them, Bellamy watches all his hopes crash and burn before his eyes. Clarke is married, he's been deluding himself to think otherwise, and he's going to have to move to fucking Guam or something to escape the embarrassment.

The disappointment prods him into picking a fight when Clarke explains to Echo why she doesn't wear a ring. “And you’re okay with that?” he asks Monty, who shrugs.

“The important part is that we’re married,” he says. “I don’t need to brand Clarke with the trappings of ownership as long as I know we’re committed.”

Bellamy snorts in disbelief. 

Clarke raises a brow at him. “Problem with that?” she asks, blue eyes gleaming with challenge.

“No, it’s just that if yo-" _you were my wife._ He stops himself. "If I were married, I’d want the traditional stuff - matching rings, matching names, the works.”

“Of course you would. Because you’re possessive." She smirks at him and he groans at the old fight. 

“Here we go again.”

“You are,” she insists. “Why else would you think you had the right to dictate who your sister can and can’t date? She’s a grown woman with a mind of her own and-”

“And there’s a difference between possessive and protective,” he argues, tapping the table, getting mad all over again, just thinking about his sister and her boyfriend. “And Lincoln is seven years older than her, and I don’t-”

“You don’t want to deal with the fact that your sister is an adult and doesn’t need your protecting anymore. Seven years is hardly cause for-” 

Monty interrupts her, because the waitress has reappeared for their order, and Bellamy chafes under the constraints of having other people present for his conversation with Clarke. In this, he wholeheartedly admits that he's possessive; even at work, he doesn't like sharing her attention with others and will often throw things at her while she's on the phone, just so she looks his way.

He wonders if it doesn't run both ways when Clarke badgers him about his order and frowns after Echo links her arm with his.

Hope, the treacherous bastard, rises again, until Clarke and Monty tell Echo about how they met, laughing and talking over one another.

He can almost hear his heart snap in two.

 

* * *

 

 

After dinner, he walks Echo to her cab, trying not to drag his feet when he notices that Clarke and Monty are waiting for him.

"This was a fucking disaster," he says, dredging up some facsimile of a smile. "But thanks for coming along to witness it."

She stares at him askance. "For a smart guy, you're an idiot sometime. I was actually going to say that I think you're right."

He gapes. "Were we at the same dinner? They clearly love each other."

"Yes, they do," she agrees, kissing his cheek. "But I don't think they're  _in love_ with each other." Leaning back, she looks at him and sighs. "It's a shame. I was prepared to be the shoulder you cried on so I could lay a foundation for something more, but..." She shakes her head with a smile. "Not so crazy, it seems."

"Echo," he says, when she climbs into the backseat. She pauses. "Thanks."

She huffs out a laugh. "You bet."

 

* * *

 

 

Somehow Monty manipulates Bellamy into giving Clarke a ride home and Bellamy tries to tell himself it doesn't mean what he wants it to means. 

Right up to the point were he's sitting in Clarke's driveway and she's saying, "Bellamy, I need to tell you something.”

His pulse ticks up and his heart is beating so hard that he's sure she can hear it, but he manages to answer, "Anything."

And she tells him the whole wild tale, start to finish, and he listens in dazed silence, a litany of " _Thank god, thank god_ ," circling through his mind until he finds it's spilling out of his mouth and into hers and he's kissing her like his life depends on it. It just might. "I’m in love with you," he confesses, pressing his forehead to hers. "I’ve been in love with you for so long, I didn’t know what to do anymore.”

“Really?” she asks, pulling back from him. Her face is delightfully flushed, her lips red and damp, and he's staring at her in awe, wanting to remember every shift of her features as she says, “Bellamy, I’m in love with you, too.”

He kisses her again and pours out every ounce of frustrated, hopeless love that has been haunting him for months. She's nearly as desperate as he is and he makes a note to ask her in the not-too-distant future just how long she's felt this way about him. But for now, they have this.

When they pull apart again, she laughs breathlessly. “I can’t believe this. I really thought you’d hate me.”

“Never." He kisses her to seal that vow, hard and fast. “I could never hate you. I’m mad as hell at you, though.” He kisses her again. “I’m really, really-” And again. “Mad.” And again.

“I’ll make it up to you,” she promises and her sly, flirty smile is a thing of beauty, a siren's song luring him out of his car and into her house, where she does in fact make it up to him.

 

* * *

 

 

An embarrassingly short while later (he'd be more ashamed if she hadn't been right there with him), they're lying in a sweaty mess on her bed and he can't stop his fingers from tracing patterns all over her pale shoulders.

"Oh, my god, Bellamy," she says suddenly, turning in his arms and swatting at him. "What about Echo?"

"What about her?" he answers dumbly, before the other shoe drops and he remembers that he'd let Clarke believe he was dating Echo. "Oh, no. We're just friends. It's not a big deal." She goes very quiet, so quiet that he tucks his chin in to look at her. "Clarke?"

She presses her face to his chest with a dazed laugh that turns into full-on, contagious belly laughs and soon they're both wiping away tears of mirth. 

"How many people know the full story?" she asks him between lingering giggles. "I told Raven and Monty. He probably told his husband. Did you tell anyone besides Echo?"

"Octavia. So that's five people who know."

"Let's promise never to tell anyone else."

He tilts her face up and grins against her mouth. "Oh, come on. It's not that bad, is it?" He kisses her gently once, twice, three times. "It led us here."

Her lashes flutter closed as she runs the tip of her nose against his cheek. "I guess that's not too terrible." She pulls back and blinks her eyes open. "But we're going to come up with a story that is  _much_ more sympathetic to my side."

"I could probably be persuaded," he says, rolling onto his back and pulling her atop him to let her do just that.

 

**Author's Note:**

> feel free to come talk to me on [tumblr](http://itsactuallycorrine.tumblr.com)


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